David Howard Reed (1963–2011)

2012·0.18 MB·English

by  Gale, George A

Obituary
NAT. HIST. BULL. SIAM. SOC. 58: 3–4, 2012
David Howard Reed (24 March 1963 – 24 October 2011*)
David Reed (right) with his friend and colleague Dusit Ngoprasert (left, KMUTT Ph.D. student at the
time photo was taken) in Khao Yai National Park (Thailand)
David was one of those rare individuals who you could always count on to get things
done. He was a tireless worker for science and conservation and a huge supporter of
Thailand and Thailand’s students. His death of congestive heart failure at the young age
of 48 is a huge loss to ecological, conservation, genetic and evolution research in Thailand
and elsewhere around the world. Born in New Jersey, USA from parents of very modest
means, but by the time he was an undergraduate it became clear to his teachers that he had
substantial abilities in math and science and was strongly encouraged to continue his studies.
During the past decade, David made multiple trips to Thailand. His first extended academic
trip was on a Fulbright Scholarship at Prince of Songkla University in 2004. Although this
first Fulbright did not proceed as smoothly as planned, he persisted (as he always seemed to
do) with his interest in Thailand, and completed a much more productive second Fulbright at
Kasetsart University (Bangkok) 2007-2008. We first met David at the Wildlife Conference
at Kasetsart in December 2007. Almost immediately after that meeting his emails start to
arrive and kept arriving nearly every day until perhaps hours before his death. We began to
*exact time of death is not known
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collaborate with him early in 2008 at the Conservation Ecology Program at King Mongkut’s
University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT). Although we have known him less than four
years, someone in our lab would receive an email from him almost every day and certainly
every week. Where we would often send him a few lines of email, sometimes indicating that
this or that hadn’t gotten done, he would send one page emails outlining what he had done
and what he was doing and what needed to be done next. He provided essential comments
on statistics, experimental design, and many other technical topics on organisms ranging
from bulbuls to bears; he even found time to edit the English of student manuscripts and was
guiding us through our early attempts at molecular genetics when he passed away. It is our
hope that his energy and drive will inspire those in the field to continue the daunting task of
understanding and conserving biodiversity. At his passing he was an Associate Professor and
Wallace Chair at the University of Louisville, an editor of Animal Conservation, Associate
Editor of Conservation Genetics and the Journal of Wildlife Thailand and the author of at least
47 peer-reviewed publications with many more to come even though he is gone. According
to Google Scholar, at last count his seminal paper published with Richard Frankham in 2003
in Conservation Biology, Correlation between Fitness and Genetic Diversity, has been cited
>500 times. He was adviser or committee member to 5 Thai graduate students and provided
critical comments on countless other Thai student manuscripts for international publication.
We will greatly miss our friend and scholar.
George A. Gale, Tommaso Savini,
and Dusit Ngoprasert